Preparation of porous calcium phosphate microspheres with phosphate-containing molecules at room temperature for drug delivery and osteogenic differentiation

Calcium phosphate (CaP) has similar chemical properties to those of the inorganic component of human bone tissue, for potential application in drug delivery for the chemotherapy of osteosarcoma. In this work, CaP with a porous microsphere structure has been synthesized using fructose-1,6-bisphosphate (FBP) as the phosphorus source by a simple wet-chemical strategy at room temperature. The CaP porous microspheres, as an organic–inorganic hybrid nano-platform, exhibit good doxorubicin (Dox) loading capacity, and Dox-loading CaP, enhancing the in vitro chemotherapy of osteosarcoma cells. The CaP porous microspheres show high biocompatibility, and induce the osteogenic differentiation of MC3T3-E1. These results indicate that the CaP porous microspheres reported in this study are promising for application as an anti-osteosarcoma drug carrier and osteoinductive material for bone regeneration in the treatment of osteosarcoma.